California Natural Products (CNP), Lathrop, Calif., unveiled its new automated facility—what is said to be the most technologically advanced warehouse in the food and beverage industry.

The 18,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility, designed and built by Power Automation Systems (PAS), also based in Lathrop, Calif., was created to increase efficiency while reducing environmental impact by cutting energy use by approximately 80% and improving upon the facility’s spatial footprint by about 90%. “As the leading aseptic packaging organization in North America, we are committed to innovation and spearheading food technology trends,” says Pat Mitchell, president and founder.

“Our new automated warehouse not only helps us to expand our manufacturing capacity and increase overall efficiencies, but also helps to lower production costs and minimize negative environmental impacts while saving natural resources. With more and more companies placing a higher value on sustainability, California Natural Products’ ability to deliver both high-quality and volume makes their switch to sustainable packaging an easy decision.”

The new CNP warehouse features PowerStor, a sustainable automated warehouse storage solution that has what is said to be the highest storage density, highest throughput, greatest flexibility and lowest energy usage in existence.

Located directly across the road from the company’s existing food manufacturing and packaging plant, the state-of-the-art warehouse features an enclosed overhead bridge that loops the products loaded onto pallets from the manufacturing facility to the storage warehouse using a high-speed, flexible pallet delivery system that is controlled through PASWare warehouse control system software. The scalable space accommodates nearly 9,000 pallet positions across 12 PowerStor levels that span 90 feet in the air.

With this new system, the loaded system staging carts in the PowerStage system travel up to 600 feet per minute, maximizing space utilization, reducing operating expenses and decreasing carbon footprint. Furthermore, based on cutting-edge robotics operating throughout the entire warehouse system, the fully automated cart and lift-based storage and retrieval system will help improve inventory control as well as safety and security systems by reducing human error.

“In designing our warehouse solutions to fit the specific needs of California Natural Products, we kept the company’s aggressive growth strategy and commitment to sustainability front-of-mind, as well as the need to house products from dozens of national brands—all with plans to continue to grow,” says Rodney Tipton, president of Power Automation Systems. “Our revolutionary design addresses California Natural Products’ ongoing needs and keeps the company on the cutting edge by providing for high throughput of large quantities of multiple size loads, while simultaneously improving productivity, speed, accuracy and flexibility throughout the warehouse system.”

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Food safety begins at the point of manufacturing and continues throughout the supply chain. The rapid adoption of the Internet of Things, and the breadth of technologies available, place the food industry in a prime position to benefit from improved traceability and real-time data to ensure product integrity and food safety. This webinar, “Leveraging Technology for Food Safety,” sponsored by Avery Dennison explores the potential of technology – the benefits, ease-of-use and opportunity – to advance quality control, gain efficiencies and improve food safety.

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